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"It is quite extraordinary how very various are the opinions entertained on this point, and, before sifting them, one must be careful in the first place to eliminate from our inquiry the cases of that considerable class of persons who pinch themselves."
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Exlpore more Skepticism quotes
"We all approached doing a sequel with great trepidation and skepticism."
"When I want to know what France thinks, I ask myself."
"While believing strongly, without evidence, is considered a mark of madness or stupidity in any other area of our lives, faith in God still holds immense prestige in our society. Religion is the one area of our discourse where it is considered noble to pretend to be certain about things no human being could possibly be certain about. It is telling that this aura of nobility extends only to those faiths that still have many subscribers. Anyone caught worshipping Poseidon, even at sea, will be thought insane."
"Skepticism means not intellectual doubt alone but moral doubt."
"Don't believe anything you read on the net. Except this. Well, including this, I suppose."
"I don't believe that aliens exist,but I do believe that any new facts can strengthen foundation of my belief."
"Even the self-assured truth-finders and self-proclaimed freedom-fighters reject Truth. As admirable as such endeavors may be, they still only really want it so long as it to some extent confirms what they had already presumed to be true."
"Round numbers are always false."
"The wrong approaches to faith and to skepticism are equally detrimental to the path. For the former declares its answers too soon and is later found false, the latter rejects sound answers altogether and hashes itself useless."
"I can't admit of an old boy of a God who takes walks in his garden with a cane in his hand, who lodges his friends in the belly of whales, dies uttering a cry, and rises again at the end of three days; things absurd in themselves, and completely opposed, moreover, to all physical laws, which prove to us, by the way, that priests have always wallowed in turpid ignorance, in which they would fain engulf the people with them."
Explore more quotes by James Payn
"For my part, I do not feel that the scheme of future happiness, which ought by rights to be in preparation for me, will be at all interfered with by my not meeting again the man I have in my. mind."
"Some Critics on the Hearth are not only good-natured, but have rather too high, or, if that is impossible, let us say too pronounced, an opinion of the abilities of their literary friends."
"The fact is, if a young man is naturally indolent, the spur of necessity will drive him but a very little way, while the having enough to live upon is often the means of preserving his self-respect."
"There are, it is true, at present no great prizes in literature such as are offered by the learned professions, but there are quite as many small ones - competences; while, on the other hand, it is not so much of a lottery."
"In England, literary pretence is more universal than elsewhere from our method of education."
"In all highly civilised communities Pretence is prominent, and sooner or later invades the regions of Literature."
"As a rule, anyone who can tell a good story can write one, so there really need be no mistake about his qualification; such a man will be careful not to be wearisome, and to keep his point, or his catastrophe, well in hand."
"A great philosopher has stated that the worst evil of poverty is, that it makes folks ridiculous; by which, I hope, he only means that, as in the above case, it places them in incongruous positions."
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